Thousands of flower lovers will be lining up Saturday to receive eight free tulips at Union Square’s annual “Tulip Day,” which is held annually in honor of International Women’s Day, and it’s advised to get there early, since, naturally, long lines and snarled traffic are to be expected.

Union Square’s annual Tulip Day returns Saturday, featuring a free public giveaway of 80,000 tulips — eight per person — sponsored by JPMorgan Chase. The event marks the start of Union Square in Bloom, as Bay City News reports, featuring floral displays, food, and themed cocktails from nearby businesses.

The tulips are grown in the United States using bulbs sourced from the Netherlands, continuing a floral tradition that dates back to the first Tulip Festival in 1929 in Holland, Michigan, according to a Union Square Alliance press release.

“Each year, Tulip Day draws thousands of residents and visitors to Union Square, bringing great energy to the heart of our city,” said Mayor Lurie in the release. “I’m thrilled for the return of Tulip Day this March as we continue working hand-in-hand with the Union Square Alliance to drive foot traffic, support local businesses, and accelerate our downtown recovery.”

As to be expected, the influx of visitors means long lines and gridlocked traffic downtown, so attendees are advised to get there early. As NBC Bay Area reports, the line starts at 9 am ahead of the gates opening at 1 pm.

Last year, KTVU spoke to Sarah and Phillipa Colborne of San Francisco who got to the event at sunrise after missing the previous year’s event due to the long lines. "We were people-watching while the sun came up, and it’s just fun. It’s worth making the effort," they said.

In 2024, NBC Bay Area spoke to Woodland resident Ruth Delemos, who had also missed the previous year’s festivities and made sure to got there early the second time around.

“Last year we came and we missed out, because there were so many people,” Delemos said. “We gave up, and went to the store and got tulips. This year, we planned it a lot better. It’s absolutely stunning. What a great community thing to do.”

Image: Union Square Alliance

Related: Go Get Some Free Tulips In Union Square On Saturday

In this week's Field Notes: from a chic Mission dog shelter and a mansion under the Bay Bridge to pavement plants and dahlias in Oakland. Also, tactile SF maps, Obon in the park, queer family stories, cat zines, and a Sacramento ghost town.

Inside Muttville’s chic new HQ

In San Francisco’s Mission, Muttville’s new shelter blends style and dog-friendly design with Missoni carpets, playful murals, and Zen rooms for newcomers to decompress.

Interior designer Ken Fulk helped furnish the space with stylish but functional donations from storage. The on-site vet clinic, grooming area, and open adoption rooms keep tails wagging and humans lingering — where short visits often stretch into hours of play and companionship. — Dwell, neemtravels

New film traces LGBTQ+ SF family life

Fairyland, opening nationwide October 10, tells the story of poet and activist Steve Abbott and his daughter Alysia as they build a life together in San Francisco after her mother’s death.

Based on Alysia Abbott’s memoir, the film follows their unconventional family through the city’s queer community of the 1970s and into the devastation of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. It shows how love and resilience carried people through a hard chapter in LGBTQ+ history. — Edge Media Network

A Japanese American celebration in Golden Gate Park

BonPOP reimagines the Obon festival with dance, taiko, and ritual led by Japantown artists and cultural practitioners in Golden Gate Park on August 31.

Obon, a 500-year-old tradition originating in Buddhist and Taoist festivals, is marked across Japan each August with temple visits, lanterns, and family gatherings in honor of one’s ancestors — and BonPOP carries that spirit into San Francisco. — BonPOP

Tactile maps

Maps you can feel, shapes that spark memory and imagination — Fully Tactile Art SF’s Exploring Maps exhibition turns navigation into touch, emotion, and connection.

A nonprofit dedicated to free public art, they create spaces that engage all the senses and let artists reimagine how their work is experienced. Runs August 30–September 7. — Fully Tactile Art

Zine dad

Oakland dad, preschool volunteer, and longtime arts and justice professional, Channing Kennedy, draws the family cats for his kids every school day.

He’ll be at Berkeley’s Zine Fest August 23 (sorry for the late notice) and SF Zine Fest next Saturday, August 31, with new zines, cute stickers, and pawsitive vibes. — Berkeley Public Library

Gold Rush underfoot in Old Sacramento

On Sacramento’s riverfront, Old Sacramento still has wooden sidewalks, brick storefronts, and the kind of Gold Rush atmosphere that feels almost staged — except it’s real.

Decades of digs have made it one of the country’s most intensely studied 19th-century sites, with archaeologists unearthing bottles, tools, and everyday scraps of life. A historic district layered over an excavation site turned tourist stop. — Secret San Francisco

Mansion under the bridge

From the road it’s easy to miss, but tucked on Yerba Buena Island there’s a full-size mansion sitting almost directly beneath the Bay Bridge. It looks out at the water but mostly lives in the bridge’s shadow. Built in 1900 for Navy commanders, the Nimitz House once hosted brass and dignitaries, and schoolkids used to stop by with birthday cards for Admiral Chester Nimitz himself.

For a time, the house served as an event venue, which was short-lived due to the constant hum of traffic. These days it’s just another relic on the island — weathered, quiet, and nearly invisible to drivers above. — SFGate

Life in the cracks

Biology educator Mr. Kelkar turns a crack in the Oakland pavement into a classroom, pointing out foxtail, barley seed, marsh parsley, and other hardy invaders.

His whirlwind lesson shows how a handful of species dominate urban landscapes — and what we lose when they crowd out native plants. — Oakland Now

Explosion of color at Lake Merritt

The Lake Merritt gardens are full of dahlias, lined up for the San Leandro Dahlia Society’s annual show. Rows of yellow, pink, purple, orange, and white flowers fill the space, many named after family members or grown from cross-pollinated varieties.

Award-winning blooms like Olivia Maureen and Verde sit alongside favorites like “Just Married.” Each flower must bloom for three years before it can be officially named, ensuring only the strongest varieties make the cut.

After the show, the plants continue to bloom until October, when tubers are dug up, stored, and replanted in spring. Bouquets are sold to support ongoing garden care. — The Oaklandside

Dancing with visitors

For one day only, Alonzo King LINES Ballet steps into Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors, weaving live movement through the iconic video installation on SFMOMA’s sixth floor.

Dancers respond to and expand the work, turning projections into a stage where choreography becomes its own living conversation.

The Visitors installation itself runs through September 28, so catch it while you can. — SFMOMA

Top image: Muttville/Facebook

Field Notes: Recology AIR 35th, Aquatic Park Doc, Rodin with Pipe Organ, and Teen Chase Film

In hopes of getting you to flutter about town for Small Business Week, the SF Flower Mart has installed giant butterfly sculptures made of flowers in key retail corridors all over town.  

A couple weeks back, Mayor Breed declared a Small Business 30-Day Challenge wherein we are implored to not buy anything from the Amazons, Targets, and mass retailers of the world, and instead only shop at local small businesses for the month of May. And as we metamorphose back into creatures who go outside and socialize again, the San Francisco Flower Mart is sweetening the deal, by placing 10-foot-wide floral butterfly sculptures around town to get you to fly around to your local retailers on this Small Business Week.

The floral butterflies are already up, and will remain out through Friday. (Though they’re generally only out during the business hours of the storefronts hosting them.)

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“A total of 13 life-size butterflies will bloom throughout the city’s commercial corridors, kicking off Small Business Month,” according to a release from Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s office. “The selfie-ready sculptures are created by designers from the San Francisco Flower Mart, one of the city’s oldest Legacy Businesses and one of the nation’s last remaining wholesale markets.”

That release of course focuses on District 3’s Chinatown/North Beach butterfly, seen above at its introduction on Saturday. “The theme of the District 3 Chinatown/North Beach butterfly sculpture is ‘East Meets West,’ in a nod to the longtime collaborative spirit between the Chinatown and North Beach communities.” “The artist, Nixon Tran, has incorporated flowers and materials of significance to both communities.”

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Other floral designers featured include Acme Floral, Anies Charles, Desiree Flower & Design Studio, Envy Floral Design Paul Robertson, RD Floral & Event Design, Sharla Flock Designs, Sharp Stick Studio, and Stanlee Gatti Designs.

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The Google Map map below (which may require some zooming in) shows the locations of all 13 floral butterflies, and again, they’re only up til Friday. So they won’t be around for Mother’s Day, but any photos you take could come in handy if you screw up and forget to send your mom a card this week.

Related: New Flower Mart to Rise In Potrero Instead of 395 Units of Housing [SFist]

Top Image: Jay Barmann, SFist

The sense of unfairness among small retail business owners around the Bay Area has been growing as the initial virus panic fades, and after eight weeks in which big-box retail stores and grocers like Walmart and Whole Foods have been allowed to remain open, often selling "non-essential" goods.

On Monday, flower shops in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties will get to reopen for curbside pickup and sales along with the vast majority of other retailers, but the same will not yet be true for three other Bay Area counties and the City of Berkeley where stricter, Phase 1 sheltering orders are remaining in place a bit longer (pending any new revised orders from those counties' health officers).

That isn't sitting well with Ashby Flowers co-owner Marcy Simon, whose Berkeley shop sits next door to an Amazon-owned Whole Foods location, where flowers are also for sale. Ashby Flowers has been allowed to stay open for deliveries only — KPIX reports that other flower shops elsewhere in Alameda County have begun doing curbside pickups but that is not clear from the most recent county health order issued last week. The City of Berkeley's public health department, which acts independently of the county, is maintaining no curbside retail reopenings for now, and Simon is getting impatient.

"At the beginning we immediately closed our store, shut off our lights, put up messages to the community saying 'we’re all in this together and we’ll be back.'" She adds, "I think people are going to start defying the rules much more now that Tesla has done that, for sure. We won’t, but others will."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a stand against Alameda County this week and ultimately got his way in reopening the Fremont Tesla plant — even though it seemed like the county was headed toward allowing manufacturing to restart soon anyway. But actions without consequences like that breed insurrection, and it's likely we're going to see a lot of other business owners rebelling in similar ways given the financial stress of the last two months.

And it's doubly frustrating for Bay Area business owners given that other parts of the state are getting to reopen things faster. Governor Gavin Newsom made announcements about curbside retail being allowed to start last Friday, and now 18 rural counties across California are already moving into the second half of Phase 2 in which dine-in restaurants get to reopen. This acceleration is based on the relatively low prevalence of the coronavirus in those counties thus far — and based on their being able to document hospital capacity to handle a potential surge in cases, if it comes.

As one Yuba County resident told a reporter last week, upon the reopening of a shopping mall there in defiance of the state, "It’s always the big box stores that can stay open, and not the small ones."

Last week, Ms. Simon told a reporter from ABC 7 that she planned to reopen Ashby Flowers for curbside pickups on May 8 along with other florists in the state just in time for Mother's Day, in defiance of Alameda County. But she later relented and chose to remain closed.

In announcing the loosening of retail restrictions in his county on Wednesday, San Mateo County health officer Dr. Scott Morrow said, "The virus continues to circulate in our community, and this increase in interactions among people is likely to spread the virus at a higher rate. Whether these modifications allow the virus to spread out of control, as we saw in February and March and resulted in the first shelter in place order, is yet to be seen."

As of Thursday morning, San Francisco had 1,999 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 65 people hospitalized, and Alameda County has 2,178 cases with 79 people hospitalized. San Mateo County has 1,536 cases with 63 in the hospital.

Related: Mayor Breed Gives Green Light For Most SF Retail to Open For Curbside Sales and Delivery on Monday

Photo: Facebook

The very rare and very peculiar Amorphophallus titanum is about to bloom at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers.

SF Weekly delivers the odorous news of the "Terra the Titan," a plant that blooms only once every three or four years — and only for a day. Even more curious, the blooming plant has the distinct smell of rotting flesh or rotting meat. Naturally, everyone is super psyched to smell this beast.

The Conservatory is currently is possession of "Terra the Titan" and expects her to blossom sometime between June 13 and June 15. Basically, San Francisco flower nerds are anticipating the birth of extreme funk.

Explains the Weekly:

The Amorphophallus titanum grows in the rainforests on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, and it looks like it was sent by a race of sentient plants to colonize Earth. A relative of the calla lily and the cuckoo pint that can grow to nine feet, it's the largest flower in the world, and its unpleasant aroma is an evolutionary adaptation meant to attract beetles that feast on carrion, in order to help pollinate it. Even in the wild, these flowers bloom rarely, so when a cultivated specimen flowers, it's even more exciting — especially for fans of rotting fish, sweaty sock, human feces, Limburger cheese, and everything else that goes into its rich smell.

Okay well now we kinda have to smell this.

The University of California, Berkeley Botanical Garden had a "corpse flower" of its own briefly bloom in 2015 and at least 1,000 folks lined-up for the stinky opportunity to get a whiff.

The Conservatory's fetid treasure comes courtesy of Mission resident Sidney Price, who grew three Amorphophallus titanums in his bathroom until they became too big to handle in 2014. "These beautiful plants are getting destroyed in their native habitat. It was worth trying to grow them, and my bathroom, it turns out, was perfect!" Price explained to the Weekly.

While it comes as no surprise that something smelly grew inside of a Mission District residential restroom, we're betting hundreds of San Franciscans will happily line up to inhale a rare sniff of the blooming "Terra the Titan."

Related: Reservoir Algae Bloom Causes Foul Tasting, Smelling Tap Water

It's a sight familiar to folks who frequent the Outer Sunset — car painted to resemble a New York taxicab, but covered with flowers.

I always figured it was some sort of art car, or is maybe just owned by someone who decided to have fun with a traditional-looking sedan? (You guys, we have a lot of funky looking cars out in the OS, especially parked on La Playa.)

However, when Augusto Matias Jr sent these photos taken yesterday of the floral cab to both SFist and our pals at Gothamist, the Goth folks pointed out to us that this is likely a real New York City (get a rope) Cab that was part of a 2007 effort to meld art and taxis.

Per a Gothamist post from July, 2006:

The City of New York is working on the temporary, mobile public art project, Garden in Transit, which will "celebrate the 100th anniversary of New York’s first motorized taxi." Starting this fall, children will paint flowers onto decals that will then be placed on thousands of yellow cabs. Cab owners will not be required to put the decals on, but they can certainly volunteer their cabs for the project - and we suspect many will, as they will probably be attractive to that all important taxi fare - the tourist...The cabs will flower for 16 weeks, from September through December 2007.

It appears at least one cab continued to flower past that date, and at some point headed to San Francisco.

Photo: Augusto Matias Jr

A helpful Java Beach staffer I spoke with on the phone this morning says that the cab is still parked in that same spot, on La Playa on the northernmost end of the Judah mini-park. So if you're headed down to Ocean Beach today (which you should, it's gorgeous out here), check it out.

And of course, we'd love to know more of the story behind this particular cab and how it ended up in SF. If you know anything, drop us a line.

The Petaler truck. Shot by Bhautik Joshi. Adorable.

Photo by Travis Jensen.

You already know about the 3D printed roses. Now it's time for the real deal. Two SF startups, Bloom That and ThirdLove will team up this Valentine's Day to offer a Valentine's packages for SF residents only. The romantic bundles includes Bloom That's signature bouquets in recycled burlap as well as a ThirdLove gift card (so she can get perfect-fitting lingerie), delivered by Bloom That's bike messengers.

For those not in the know, ThirdLove uses a few G-rated images from your smartphone to figure out perfectly-sized lingerie. What's more, it was recently named one of the "Best New Apps" in the App Store. Fancy.

Order today, get it to your loved one(s) by Friday.

Previously: For Valentine's Day: 3D Printed Roses
For Valentine's Day: Extreme Box Of Chocolates [sold out]

The de Young is paying tribute to local floral designers with their annual springtime mash-up of art and flowers. From March 19 to 23, the show features the work of more than 100 of the Bay Area’s most innovative floral designers, who have created arrangements that draw inspiration from and pay homage to the museum's permanent collections.

Watch the de Young's Bouquets to Art centerpiece rise up like a tower of flower power (we can't resist! It rhymes!) in this time-lapse video:

Bouquets to Art, March 19-23
de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, 415.750.3600

"The Great Highway" by Bob Horowitz.

"Ready to Rumble" by Darwin Bell.